Author: Mark Fletcher

It is great to see Men’s Health and Women’s Health now published on the same day.  This provides us a good opportunity to promote both titles together -as we have done this week at our Forest Hill store.

This display is located at the front of the store in a high traffic area.  We plan to leave this display up for a week.

We also have Women’s Health displayed with women’s magazines as well as in the health section.

We have Men’s Health displayed in our men’s sports section.  We will also place it with newspapers later in the sales cycle.

The magazine covers featuring Alice in Wonderland are providing us  a rare opportunity to promote titles together.  As the Empire and Lovatts Clue Words examples in my photos show, these covers need to be fully seen. Old magazine fixturing lets them down.

In addition to displaying these titles in their usual locations, we are placing them together.  Who knows, the Alice in Wonderland cover could attract someone to the title who would not usually purchase this. Once promotion for the film reaches full strength, I’d expect us to have five, maybe six, titles we could promote together.

We are promoting InStyle magazine at the prime promotional location between two busy counter locations.  The free gift makes it a true premium offer.  The can of free dry shampoo spray which comes with the issue makes displaying in regular magazine fixturing a challenge so this display also helps out on that front.

We have placed Women’s Health next to InStyle since we expect them to appeal to the same customer.

Both magazines will remain in this location until the weekend when we will review the numbers.

We have created the display promoting Unique Cars in the photo to face people leaving our men’s magazine aisle.  We also have a half waterfall display in the regular location for this title.

It is good to see Unique Cars getting some attention from the publisher.  I’d expect it to respond well.   It’s certainly a popular title with browsers.  The million dollar question is how do you turn a newsagency magazine browser into a customer?  We try with our magazine loyalty program and while this does have an impact, not enough convert.

This display for Unique Cars is trying for a second bite at the browsers, as they leave the aisle.   It’s a good location because there is little competition for visual attention at this point.

We are promoting Woman’s Day at two of our counter positions thanks to the free cookbook with the current issue.  We will leave this here for three days.  The free cookbooks usually drive good incremental sales.  Like othjer magazine promotions, we are doing this of our own accord and not because we are paid a premium for the space. The newsagency channel is valuable for publishers, more valuable than c-stores and supermarkets in this regard.